heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

2 66 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
"Here lies enshrined, within this little tomb,
A Rose^of earth, not one of spotless bloom;
Noways remarkable midst Human flowers,
But just like others in this world of ours."
If the latter, it may
be thus rendered :
Or,
"Here lies in grave, foul Rosamond, not fair,
A Rose of dust, not beauty, whose fragrance rare,
Erewhile so sweet, would now pollute the air."
"Here lies enshrined, within this little tomb,
A Rose of earth, and not of spotless bloom ;
No longer perfumed, now consigned to earth,
Foetid, like all decay
of mortal birth."
But Stowe records that when Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, came to
Godstow in 1491, and entered the church, "he was so shocked by the
" sight of her tombe in the middle of the quire, covered with a pall of
" silke, and set about with lights of wax, that he ordered that her remains
" should be taken up and buried without the church ' lest Christian religion
" should grow
in contempt.' " Perhaps the stern justice of the mitred
ecclesiastic was as right as the charity of the royal layman. At any
rate, the spirit had passed, we trust, to find in another world the forgiveness
she had humbly sought here ;
and she had left behind her two noble
sons, Richard Long-epee, Earl of Salisbury, and Geoffry Plantagenet,
eventually Archbishop of York. They alone, of all
Henry II.'s children,
were a comfort to him.
The latter is said to have been his favourite son ;
and Canon Raine,
in his Lives of the Archbishops, has given a touching account of the
monarch's death-bed in the castle of Chinon. "The head and shoulders
" of the sick man were resting on his son's breast, who was driving away
" with a fan the flies that buzzed around his father's face, while a knight,
" at the end of the bed, held to his bosom his master's feet. The eye
" of the enfeebled monarch opened and fell
upon his son. He told him
" that, though base born, he had been a truer child to him than all his
"rightful children. Should his life be spared his filial affection should
"not be unrewarded. He bade him prosper and be blessed. His eyes
"closed, but when he heard the expressions of grief which his son was
"unable to repress, they opened again. Henry was dying, but he knew
"him, and faltered out his wish that he might be Bishop of Winchester
" or Archbishop of York ;
blessed him for the last time, and gave him, as
"a final token of his affection, a ring of gold, and a ring with a noble
"sapphire which he had worn and regarded as a talisman."
After this he passed away, and Geoffry committed his remains most
reverently to the tomb in the church of Fontevraud.